Gallery Guide: Inedible Feast by Laura Shill

hands that don’t reach back a meal you can’t eat a feed that can’t nourish us

Inedible Feast is a sculptural installation that makes material the gap between the selves we present online and the selves we are IRL. The exhibition is a sensuous space of baroque excess with vignettes overflowing with feast worthy foods, fertile fruits with sexual overtones, and a single human body endlessly multiplied in a pair of arms; but all these earthly delights culminate into a lonely orgy. Representations of the symbols of our digital interconnectedness—a feast of emojis, an altar of cell phones—simulate a life performed to become an image.

The gold theater curtains frame the performance we will be viewing, and it is you who will be the performer. The online feed of your life is the spectacle that we’ve all come to see. The snakes on the front pedestal nod to the sacred atmosphere created in the exhibition. In the Bible, Eve was punished for her desire for knowledge, a relatable attempt to fill a timeless void.

Phantom limbs above reach from the ceiling, longing for a human connection but just falling short. Cellphones are the first thing we reach for in the morning from the intimate sanctuary of our beds and the last thing we let go of at night. Leaving a cellphone in the car or at home induces panic, a limb lost.

Just beyond the veil of the curtain, glows a contemporary altarpiece to the smartphone, the omniscient presence in the lives of contemporary humans.

And as we gaze into the mirror window of the smart phone, it simultaneously connects and isolates. An altar to the selfie, mirroring our desires and

underlying anxieties. We are both together and alone in our filtered feed of images in which we exist to each other as image-objects.

Our selected images depict individuals always “living their best lives” with strong friendships, passionate romantic relationships, diets that only contain the healthiest ingredients, and vacation itineraries that would fill an armchair travel journal; while the non-curated versions of our life are often filled with anxiety and loneliness. The effort and planning that goes into the gallery of self as we want to be seen is a decision to disassociate from the present and instead exist for the represented self that will be experienced by others in the future. The moment is passed over, the mountain view is experienced through the camera lens instead of in a contemplative moment of quiet, for the chance to share the view with your online audience.

Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.

Out of the corner of the eye, hands emerge from the wall in what could be an illusion or a shadow. The simultaneous seduction and repulsion of the unnatural human presence within the walls lure you upstairs to the feast hall. The dining table invites you to a timeless space of human connection where humans forever have shared a meal with one another and indulged in face to face conversations. That experience is not present here- the food is inedible, there are no chairs, the vessels don’t contain water or wine but more limbs grasping for air or food that won’t satiate their need.

The skin tones on this table are the six skin tones available in the emoji library, inclusive of all of humanity in that they represent no one at all, another idealized and oversimplified representation. The food is also taken from the emoji library, becoming humorous and absurd when manifest into physical objects and juxtaposed with reverent hands, in positions replicated from religious paintings.

In this space, an unidentifiable religious ceremony is underway. The architecture and colors are derived from the ceremonial spaces of the former Freemason occupants – a group of theatrical, frequently costumed men that gathered to practice spiritual rituals connected to ancient humans. In lieu of God, contemporary society has chosen technology to cope with the difficulties of human existence. In this space, we confront the shortcomings of our new deity and the new human connections defined in our shared longing for one another.

Historic Breckenridge wallpaper in this exhibition is presented by Breckenridge Heritage Alliance.

LAURA SHILL Laura Shill is an artist based in Los Angeles, CA and Denver, CO whose work is a collision of sculpture, installation, performance, and photography.

Shill addresses ideas of viewer and subject, disclosure and concealment, absence and intimacy. Her works explore the transformative potential of people and objects through early and experimental forms of image making that pair the sinister and beautiful. Her sculptural and installation work borrows theatrical conventions and employs repetition of form to create environments that immerse and oscillate between humor and heartbreak.

Shill earned an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2012 and has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at the 2017 Venice Biennale at the European Cultural Center, The Gallery of Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs, David B. Smith Gallery, Denver, Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago, and Durden and Ray, Los Angeles. Her 2016 solo exhibition, Phantom Touch, was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver. lauraleeshill.com